The Amazon Echo Made a Dent in the Universe

The Echo was released in 2014.  Over the holiday season in 2017 sales surged into the tens of millions.  It’s now available in over 80 countries, and Alexa is being built into hundreds of other devices (e.g. cars, TV’s, microwaves, etc). Our lives will soon be built around Alexa, and competing devices.  Need a device to perform a task?  Simply ask!

Soon after the iPhone was released in 2007, the world became a different place. Smartphones are everywhere, and they’re intertwined in our lives.   Uber and Instagram, for example, wouldn’t exist without the smartphone.

Voice assistants have existed for years, of course.  However, the Echo has a voice only interface.  The training wheels (the keyboard) have been removed.

In a few short years, we’ll look back and realize that the Echo/Alexa was the iPhone moment for computer voice interaction.

50 years after Star Trek, this piece of science fiction has almost arrived.